China’s spying happens “on an industrial scale”, with small bits of intelligence gathered and transmitted in countless ways. It’s a case of “anything you can do we can do better”, and is “just the tip of the iceberg”, says Blaxland. They’re very, very good at establishing what technology is and then seeking to replicate it,” Blaxland says. “Chinese security agencies are masterful at copycat behaviour. The second reason is to make the US aware of the fact that China has been secretly keeping up with its technology and replicating it. American airspace is so closely studied, by the US civil aviation authorities, by the US air force, the US space force, the weather networks – it’s extremely scrutinised airspace,” he says. “It’s hard to think how they could have thought that it wouldn’t have been detected. The first reason the balloon was launched, he believes, was to embarrass the US, and all the better if it captured some intelligence along the way. The Pentagon itself said in its short statement on Friday that: “Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years.”Ĭraig Singleton, a China expert of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Reuters that such balloons had been widely used by the US and Soviet Union during the cold war and were a low-cost intelligence gathering method.īlaxland thinks it’s unlikely that the Chinese weren’t expecting to be caught: being caught was probably the goal, with two outcomes in mind. “Or if you’re going to do it then expect that it won’t be well received.” “Over somebody else’s atmosphere, you are required to seek permission,” Blaxland says. The US has revived the idea in recent years, but has tended to use balloons only on US territory. They sent signals back via morse code or a “piece of paper tied to a stone”, says Blaxland. They were also used in the 1860s, during the American civil war when Union men in hot air balloons, binoculars at the ready, would try to gather information about Confederate activity further away. The French are the first recorded users of reconnaissance balloons, initiated at the Battle of Fleurus against Austrian and Dutch troops in 1794, during the French revolutionary wars. To send a satellite into space, you need a space launcher – a piece of equipment that typically costs hundreds of millions of dollars.īalloons can also scan more territory from a lower altitude and spend more time over a given area because they move more slowly than satellites, according to a 2009 report to the US air force’s Air Command and Staff College. They don’t offer the same level of persistent surveillance as satellites, but are easier to retrieve, and much cheaper to launch. But now that lasers or kinetic weapons are being invented to target satellites, there is a resurgence of interest in balloons. Satellites were the answer,” says John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University and the author of the book, Revealing Secrets. “For the last few decades, satellites were de rigueur. Why use spy balloons rather than satellites? The equipment attached to the balloons may include radar and be solar powered.īalloons typically operate at 24,000 metres – 37,000 metres (80,000-120,000 feet), well above where commercial air traffic flies – airliners almost never fly higher than 12,000 metres. What are spy balloons?Ī contemporary spy balloon is a piece of spying equipment, for example a camera, suspended beneath a balloon that floats above a given area, carried by wind currents. Later on Thursday, Canada’s National Defence released a statement saying that it was monitoring a “potential second incident”. The Pentagon said in a statement: “The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground.” Fighter jets were readied but military leaders advised President Joe Biden against shooting the balloon out of the sky for fear debris could pose a safety threat, advice Biden accepted, US officials said.
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